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The Audacity of Hope – Barack Obama

By on October 24, 2008 in Science

Just finished reading Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope. It is a very good book indeed. I read it in print form (on the Sony Reader) and as an Audio book. Skipping between the formats depending on what I was doing. The audio book version is read by Obama. He could have a good career as a voice actor in 8 years after his Presidency 🙂

The book itself is a very good manifesto for a fair and tolerant society. Parts of it moved me close to tears, whilst other parts made me laugh out loud. Not at the ideas but rather at the prose and the turn of phrase used. The only part of the book I disagree with is the chapter on Faith. Obama is a Christian and he outlines why he took this path after a wide ranging exposure to many religious, spiritual and secular ideas in his youth. Whist I can understand at the intellectual level his decision to be baptised as a Christian, I find myself disappointed that he did. I’m perfectly willing to admit that this is my bias and prejudice showing through. With that bias fully acknowledged, It has to be said that Obama presents a good case for why secularists should not expect people of faith to park their beliefs at the door. He also points out however that the religious cannot base their argument on recourse to God’s Will or scripture and expect to carry the argument. Arguments in a democracy have to be open and acceptable to all members of the society, whether religious or not. UPDATE: See video below in which Obama talks about this subject. This is much like the text in the book. This book is highly recommended. Either in print or audio book form.

The world will be a shinier place on 5th November 2008 if Barack Obama is the President Elect of the USA.

Eight-month delay for LHC

By on October 19, 2008 in Science, Technology

Botheration. It’s going to take at least 8 months to fix the Large Hadron Collider.

Officials at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, say that the time is needed to overhaul a sector of the 27-kilometre-long machine, after an electrical failure on 19 September caused some 6 tonnes of ultra-cold liquid helium to leak into its tunnel. A preliminary report issued on 16 October says that as many as 29 of the nearly 10,000 magnets used to guide the accelerator’s proton beam will need to be replaced. Further magnets may need to be removed and inspected, and modifications must also be made to prevent future accidents. “It’s a serious incident,” says James Gillies, a spokesman for the laboratory.

From: Eight-month delay for LHC : Nature News

‘Creationism’ biologist quits job

By on September 16, 2008 in Science

I’ve had an item in my to do list for a few days to blog about the remarks made by Professor Michael Reiss on how creationism should be handled if it comes up in classrooms. Looks like I’ll have to discuss his resignation as well when I get round to it.

Professor Michael Reiss has quit as director of education at the Royal Society following the controversy over his recent comments on creationism.

From: BBC NEWS | Education | ‘Creationism’ biologist quits job

Nature Special on the Large Hadron Collider

By on September 16, 2008 in Science, Technology

Nature have a nice web site section on the LHC.

Specials : Nature News: “The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. As the first proton beams zipped around the LHC’s massive 27-kilometre ring on 10 September 2008, it marked a new era of physics that could pin down the identity of the dark matter that shapes galaxies; find the Higgs boson, believed to confer mass on the other particles of the quantum bestiary; and recreate conditions that existed a split-second after the Big Bang. In this online Special, Nature asks how it works, what it will find, and why we should be excited.”

(Via Nature Journal.)

The ant from Mars : Nature News

By on September 16, 2008 in Science

Cool new ant species discovered. More info at Nature site:

It is so new, and so bizarre, that uber-naturalist E. O. Wilson has christened it “the ant from Mars”. Martialis heureka, a native of the Brazilian Amazon, is the founding member of a new subfamily of ants. It adds a new branch to the ant family tree which split off from the others extremely early in the family’s evolution. From The ant from Mars : Nature News

antside anttop

The LHC defended

By on September 11, 2008 in Science, Technology

There is an excellent response on the BBC site to those questioning the expense of the LHC in general, and by the current head of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in particular. The LHC is a marvellous endeavour and suggesting that the money would be better spent on climate change, or medical research is missing the point. We need to do both, and more. Humanity needs to explore. We need to probe the quantum realm. We need to explore the cosmos. We need to research for new medical advances. We need to find new cleaner energy sources. We need to do lots of things, but not at the expense of basic research into the way the Universe functions. The money spent on the LHC is not that much in comparison to other national expenditure. The UK contribution is equivalent to the cost of a pint of beer per head per year. It’s peanuts. Both figuratively and in a real sense. More is spent in the UK on peanuts every year than the UK contributes to the LHC. Maybe we should stop pouring money down the Iraq rat hole if we want to save. I’m looking forward to many years of interesting data and results from the LHC.

The plan

By on August 31, 2008 in General, Science, Writing

I like to set goals. I’m not that keen on keeping to them, but I like setting them as targets and frameworks to work with. I’ve got a set of personal and work related goals that want to work to over the next few years. Sort of my own personal Soviet style 5-year plan.

Work Stuff

Become the go-to guy for VMware VI3 questions and also for Mac OS X integration into Windows environments. Also be the person people search out when they have questions about current and new technology.

Personal Stuff

Learn mathematics. Using this selection of self study books:

mathbooks Click picture for larger view

I want to be able to read Penrose’s The Road to Reality and understand the mathematics in it.

Do several Open University courses to finish a BSc I’m doing with them:

S366 Evolution

SXN390 Science in Society Project

Do the Open University MSc Science and Society. As long as they let me in. [Update: They did!] I’ve pulled out a few courses recently and they have a rule that stops you registering for new courses. Which is fair enough. They don’t get paid by the government if people don’t complete the courses. In any event I’ll be doing something in the science communication field (including many more posts here on the Soapbox) as we need to fight the hoards of superstitious nut jobs. We can’t cede any of the ground won in the last 400 years with rationality and the scientific method.

Continue to work on some science fiction stories I’m writing. One is set in a space opera scale universe and the other is set in the Frank Herbert Hellstrom’s Hive universe.

Music – I’ve got about dozen songs in various stages of work (all have full lyrics). I want to continue to work on them and maybe package them together as an actual album. That’d be cool 🙂

Write a cricket match scoring system for Macintosh and iPhone using Cocoa. Unless someone else develops on that meets my needs first. I’d be happy if they did. Programming projects always bore the tits of me after the initial requirements specification and design are done! [Update: I’ve also had an idea for an app that uses the Twitter API]

We’ll see how I get on…